Ex-employee accuses Seagate of patent violation

Emma Woollacott, 29th December 2009

A former Seagate employee has accused the company of appropriating hard drive technology from Convolve for use in its own products and later destroying evidence.

The two companies have been locked in a legal battle for nearly ten years over the issue, with Convolve and MIT seeking $800 million for the use of noise-reduction technology.

But now Paul A Galloway, who was a Seagate servo engineer until July this year, has come forward to back up Convolve's case.

The court filing says that Convolve disclosed to Seagate various methods to improve disk drive performance and reduce noise.

"According to Mr Galloway, Seagate widely disseminated Convolve's technology throughout Seagate's servo engineering community, but engineers like Mr Galloway, who were exposed to Convolve's technology, were not told that it was protected under an NDA," it reads.

The filing continues, "Certain technologies Seagate now claims to have independently developed were, in fact, influenced by Convolve's technology."

Galloway also alleges that Seagate deliberately destroyed source code that could have proved the patent violation.